China continues to be the most exposed market to deforestation from its soy imports, followed by Brazil’s domestic market and imports by the European Union (EU).

Trase’s ability to link all Brazilian soy exports to municipalities of production based on publicly available data is a challenge for the 2020–2022 period due primarily to missing information in trade data, and a lack of information on trader silo and crushing facility ownership. As a result, 15–18% of soy traded in 2020–2022 (approximately 20 million tonnes) cannot be linked to a specific municipality of soy production (unknown municipality). To account for this, Trase’s Brazilian soy supply chain data now includes deforestation exposure of trading companies and markets associated with their sourcing from unknown municipalities.

To do this, Trase first assigns deforestation exposure to companies and importing markets according to their sourcing from known soy-producing municipalities based on the municipality-specific soy deforestation per tonne. Second, the remaining, unaccounted-for soy deforestation is allocated to companies and import market trade flows originating from unknown municipalities. Similar to the first step, deforestation per tonne is calculated by dividing the remaining soy deforestation by the total production originating from unknown municipalities, and assigned to companies and markets based on their traded volume sourced from unknown municipalities. This prevents importing countries and traders with a greater volume of soy of unknown origin from appearing to have a lower deforestation exposure. It also allows for the allocation of all of Brazil’s soy deforestation to domestic and international supply chains.

For some importing countries, there is a significant difference in the amount of soy and deforestation that can be linked to specific soy-producing municipalities. For example, in 2022, 97% of China’s soy imports and 96% of its associated deforestation exposure could be linked to soy-producing municipalities, whereas for the EU, only 58% of imports and 55% of deforestation exposure could be linked. Given such differences, it is important for users to understand that importing countries or companies with a higher degree of unknown sourcing will have a lower proportion of their deforestation exposure estimate that is specific to their sourcing pattern, as their unknown sourcing deforestation exposure is the average deforestation per tonne of all unknown trade flows.